Online column – Museum Computer Network &
Museums Computer Group
Museums increasingly need support for the use of
computers with the advent of the web. Two existing organizations, the Museum
Computer Network [www.mcn.edu] and the
Museums Computer Group [www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk]
provide such support in the US and UK respectively in terms of acting as a
focal point for the community of professionals interested in this aspect of
museums. There are parallels between the two organizations, although MCN is
perhaps more established than MCG.
Both
MCN and MCG organize meetings. MCN holds an annual conference, normally in the
USA, although the most recent was held just over the border in Toronto, Canada,
4-7 September 2002 [www.mcn.edu/mcn2002].
This includes workshops, presentations and an exhibition, but no formal
proceedings.
Because of its location, the
Canadian Heritage Information Network was in strong evidence at MCN2002,
including a keynote talk by the Director, Lyn Sherwood. The CHIN bilingual
website in English and French has been recently redesigned [www.chin.gc.ca]. CHIN has also developed the
Virtual Museum of Canada with sponsorship support [www.virtualmuseum.ca]. This includes a
facility to create a personalised online museum [www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/Personal]
by selecting images within the website. This could be particularly good as an
educational resource for projects by school children.
The AMICO Art Museum Image
Consortium [www.amico.org] was also
presented by David Bearman and others. This multimedia resource including
images from participating museums for educational use by schools, universities
and museums that wish to subscribe has a claimed user base of 3 million even though
it has no government funding. More specialist is the Drexel Historic Costume
Collection website [digimuse.cis.drexel.edu]
including selected QuickTime 3D rotatable images of costumes.
The MCG holds rather
lower-key but nevertheless interesting meetings, often offering a day at a
larger museum during which it is possible to see behind the scenes for a
glimpse of computer-related activities at the museum. The most recent meeting
was held at the Victoria & Albert Museum [www.vam.ac.uk]
in South Kensington, London on 10 October 2002. This was a packed day of talks,
both long and short. Details of the approach and information technology used in
the new British Galleries was given in detail together with plans for future
developments at the V&A. The 40 touch screen interactives in these
galleries are impressively understated and even more impressively working! Less
impressive is the delay in getting them on-line, although this is promised
soon.
An interesting feature at
the V&A is a scheme allowing the secondment of museum curators to give them
time to develop new web resources after receiving some training in the
technology involved. With regard to statistics, most visitors to the V&A
website are female, aged 19-34 years, from the London area and have a degree.
The website receives around 150,000 visits per month.
Next the European ARTISTE
Framework 5 IST project, with the aim to produce an integrated art analysis and
navigation environment including image content management, was presented [www.artisteweb.org]. Partners include the
National Gallery and V&A in London, the Uffizi in Florence, and the
University of Southampton.
David Dawson gave a
wide-ranging talk on activities related to Resource [www.resource.gov.uk], including mention
of accessibility issues and a selection of interesting websites. The MOLLI Museum
Open Learning Initiatives website [www.molli.org.uk]
includes educational material such as a Burmese Theatre shadow puppet play by
school children presented using Flash technology [www.molli.org.uk/burma/theatre/goose.htm].
The Gathering the Jewels website presents the culture of Wales in both
Welsh and English [www.gtj.org.uk]. Moving
Here [www.movinghere.org.uk] is
a project funded by the New Opportunities Fund [www.nof.org.uk]
to explore why people move to England.
British Pathe has a website with some excellent content that includes
their pre 1970 newsreels (3,500 hours of video) in a searchable database, with
free previews available [www.britishpathe.com].
A useful site for museums
producing electronic educational content is Curriculum Online [www.curriculumonline.gov.uk].
Museum and other suppliers can register, allowing schools (with a total budget
of around £50 million!) can find and order educational material. For bona fide
Registered Museums (officially registered through Resource), the process is
relatively easy. David Dawson’s presentations, including that at the October
MCG meeting, are laudably available online for those interested in further
information [www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk/about/david_dawson/presentations.asp].
A useful feature of the MCG
meeting were a series of 5-minute presentation on various museum-related
projects being undertaken, mainly involving the web. For example, Fiona
Marshall presented developments at the British Museum, including educational
resources (e.g., on Mesopotamia [www.mesopotamia.org.uk]).
Finally, Matthew Stiff of
English Heritage [www.english-heritage.org.uk]
spoke on the HITITE Heritage Illustrated Thesaurus. In addition, English
Heritage are undertaking an Images of England project to make
information and photos of England’s 370,000 listed buildings available online [www.imagesofengland.org.uk].
MCN and MCG also offer other
facilities such as electronic mailing lists, although only the MCG list is
archived at the moment, using the useful centralised UK academic JISCmail
resource [www.jiscmail.ac.uk]. This is
available free for purposes of significant benefit to the UK academic community
(including museums, although it is helpful to have a UK academic actually set
up the list, at least initially). The resource already includes a number of
museum-related lists.
With the rapid development
of the web, MCN, MCG, and similar organizations in other countries, have plenty
of opportunities to develop and prosper in the future.
Jonathan Bowen, Professor of
Computing, South Bank University, London [www.jpbowen.com]
